san francisco union leadership appears ready to cave

[Hannah Bell]

AFTER TELLING union delegates to prepare to strike to stop layoffs, leaders of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) seem ready to throw in the towel and propose acceptance of a concessionary deal...UESF President Dennis Kelly apparently believes that UESF members will accept the language of "shared sacrifice" from politicians who want workers make all the givebacks while the wealthy remain untouched...

More importantly, our union is sending a message that it is willing to sacrifice the livelihoods of some of our members in order to preserve the jobs of the rest of us. This is the opposite of solidarity and has nothing in common with the principles that built our unions. Furthermore, such a concession only greases the wheels for future layoffs that SFUSD will seek to justify through further budget deficits.

(Blow by blow exposition of the lousy union bargaining strategy follows...)

SFUSD has spent months pressing every political advantage it could to push UESF into making concessions, and never pulled any punches when our side asked for more cooperation. Now when UESF was in a position to press our advantage and potentially force SFUSD to find the money to save all our jobs, UESF backed off...

Instead, UESF leaders backed down at the very moment when we needed to make SFUSD feel the heat for once. SFUSD has made it clear that they will only respond to the demands of our bargaining team when our members making preparations to strike. The best way to get SFUSD to listen is to let our members do the talking.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/19/we-need-to-take-a-stand-in-sf


Adrienne Johnstone, a member of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) and the Educators for a Democratic Union caucus in her union, sas it's time to draw a line:


I AM a member of United Educators San Francisco, AFT Local 61. I teach 9- to 11-year-olds. I am a union activist and a socialist. And I am urging every single one of my coworkers to vote "NO" on our contract...

I have been accused of utopian idealism and unrealistic militancy for taking this position--for insisting that what my union claimed was true. When they told us that the district had enough money in its over $43 million in reserves to save these jobs, I believed them. When they told me the district spent $52 million a year on consultants, and that some of that money could be used to save jobs, I believed them.

Our union gives up $39 million in concessions in a school district loaded down with high-paid administrators, do-nothing consultants and maintaining reserve funds for unknown purposes, and somehow I am the one being called unreasonable for insisting that the money is there to stop all the layoffs.

If the school district has the money, and if we haven't even begun to fight, how could I encourage others to settle for this..? Is it idealism to insist that the school district save educators' jobs when it has money to do so? Is it militancy to ask why we stopped fighting for our members at the very moment the district started giving in...? How could I encourage others to settle for this...? STILL, AS important as the jobs of our colleagues are today, this struggle is also about our collective future....

http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/25/we-have-start-to-somewhere

[readmoreoften]

1. Go Adrienne.

:thumbsup:

[Go2Peace]

2. The trouble is that comfortable union members won't fight for the ones at risk

It's unfortunate, but I know from experience. Something very fundamental has changed in our society.

[Hannah Bell]

3. ah, but few are comfortable these days. my reading is, the rank & file trusted their leadership

too much -- but that's changing, i think.

because the complete destruction of public unionism is now a very real possibility.

there have been too many sellout contracts -- & the experience of private sector unions is instructive as well.

as witness the recent sellout of auto workers.

[eilen]

4. The selling out started way before the auto worker's.

The selling out started back in the late 1970's when manufacturing started getting pushed offshore. The last 20 years the workingman has been pushed and their unions gelded. The professional unions were not terribly supportive. Those in professions not represented were particularly unsupportive. If I am not mistaken the response was that the workers should go back to school, get retraining, "this is a knowledge economy now". Then TPTB took their jobs and imported talent from India. I'm not hearing much of that dreck anymore except from RW idiots.

The teachers thought they were safe. They were wrong. Before long they will be organized by the Teamsters.